COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: JROTC/ROTC
School Board Takes Aim at JROTC
Bonnie Eslinger, The San Francisco Examiner
May 19, 2006
SAN FRANCISCO - At Lincoln High School, the Junior Reserve Officers Training
Corps indoor shooting range and a secure armory has been replaced by a
classroom and a locked storage space that holds computers and televisions
paid for by the Department of Defense.
And although JROTC enrollment has increased, the program remains unpopular
with San Francisco's school board. It was the school board, in the mid-¹90s,
that decided students in the federal program would no longer learn to use
guns or any other combat equipment. Now, some members of the school board
say it's time to kill the program altogether.
With 1,650 San Francisco Unified School District students enrolled, there
are also JROTC programs at Balboa, Washington, Lowell, Mission, Galileo and
Burton high schools. Lincoln is home to the district's strongest JROTC
program, in part because its head, Col. Robert Powell, also oversees the
military-based program districtwide.
On Tuesday, board member Mark Sanchez will submit a resolution that calls
for all JROTC units at district campuses to shut down at the end of the
2006-07 school year, due to the military's policy of excluding persons known
to be gay or lesbian from its enlisted ranks.
³The San Francisco Unified School District cannot justify committing any
funding to a JROTC program because its connection to the U.S. Department of
Defense suggests that discrimination against some groups is tolerable,²
reads Sanchez's resolution, which is co-sponsored by veteran school board
member Dan Kelly.
Kelly said he attempted to pass a similar resolution about 10 years ago, and
other board members before him had also tried to eliminate the program, but
without success.
The district contributed more than $572,111 pay for half of the salaries of
15 full-time JROTC instructors, with DOD paying the other half. The
remaining cost of the program is picked up by DOD ‹ books, computers and
other supplies.
According to Powell, the district's JROTC program is less about the military
and more about citizenship.
³What students get out of JROTC is an opportunity to experiment with
leadership, get subjects such aid. We also do physical training and teamwork
and character-building,² he said.
Several JROTC students interviewed by The Examiner were frustrated with the
threats to close the program, saying JROTC had taught them hands-on life
skills such as leadership, teamwork and camaraderie.
Although there are no openly gay JROTC instructors within the district,
there are students participating in the daily class who are gay, Powell
said.
JROTC students interviewed said there were gay students within their ranks
and that they were treated just like any other student.
David Ziman, a senior at Lincoln who plans to attend UC Santa Cruz next
year, said that although he got into JROTC because of his interest in the
military, the program has taught him more skills applicable to business.
"There's more discrimination on the football team," Ziman said.
beslinger@examiner.com
Examiner
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